The former Labour Treasury minister who left the notorious “there’s no money” note after the party lost the 2010 general election considered “throwing himself off a cliff” in the wake of the controversy it sparked.

Once they exchanged jokes in the Downing Street rose garden, but now Nick Clegg is trudging the Oxfordshire lanes of his former boss’s constituency – not exactly in the hope of taking the seat from his Conservative successor but in an attempt to come second.

The Norwegian foreign ministry has denied local press reports that it rejected a British request to set up a formal joint taskforce aimed at preparing a post-Brexit free trade deal between the two countries.

Alain Juppé, the frontrunner in next year’s French presidential elections, is to visit London and has suggested a deal may be possible on free movement of workers that will allow the UK access to the single market.

Nick Clegg has accused the Tories of acting in a “deceitful” way over their plans for £12bn in welfare cuts, as he defended the decision of his Liberal Democrat colleague Danny Alexander to expose previous Conservative proposals prepared in 2012 to cut child benefit and tax credits.

The official campaign to leave the EU fronted by Michael Gove has been accused of “stoking the fires of prejudice” after it claimed that continued membership would put Britons in danger as a result of a high level of criminality among Turkish citizens.

The leave campaign has picked up momentum and taken a three point lead over remain in the latest Observer/Opinium poll on the EU referendum. The Brexiters now stand on 43%, while 40% say they support the campaign to keep the UK in the union.

Theresa May will have to negotiate an interim agreement on Britain’s future relationship with the EU even if the terms of Brexit can be agreed within two years, a former top civil servant at the Foreign Office has said.

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Alan Milburn, the former Labour health minister and government social mobility tsar, is at the helm of a new group funded in part by Sir Richard Branson to fight Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Nigel Farage is anticipating an invitation to Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th president of the United States, sources have indicated, as it was confirmed the interim Ukip leader is poised to launch an eighth bid to become an MP.